Zerch to be $50 million business in 3 years in India: Mahindra Comviva

The company forayed into the direct to consumer space with Zerch in December. In the five months, the company has set up presence in four cities.PTI | Updated: April 21, 2016, 21:43 IST

Mobile value-added services firm Mahindra Comviva aims to garner revenues of about $40-50 million in the next three years from 'Zerch' as it expands the hyperlocal deals discovery platform to more cities across India.

The company forayed into the direct to consumer space with Zerch in December. In the five months, the company has set up presence in four cities - Pune, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Delhi-NCR.

"We have seen a tremendous response since our launch. We are now present in four cities and have 6,000 merchants on board. The plan is to scale this steadily and get between 17,000-20,000 merchants on the platform by the end of the year," Mahindra Comviva Senior VP and Head of Mobile Financial Solutions Srinivas Nidugondi told PTI.

In terms of adoption by customers, Zerch already has 3.5 lakh users and is expected to cross the one million user mark by the end of this year, he added.

"In three years, we see this business to be worth $40 - 50 million in the next three years in India... We would at some point in time want to hive the business off as a separate standalone business," he said.

A subsidiary of IT services major Tech Mahindra, Mahindra Comviva has an extensive portfolio of mobile finance, content, infotainment, messaging and mobile data solutions.

Talking about expansion, Nidugondi said the company will add Mumbai and Chennai to its operations in the next two months and then expand to a few other smaller cities in the coming months.

"We average about 100 transactions in a day across cities. We want to make Zerch consumer as well as merchant-friendly. We will focus on bringing additional revenue for our merchants," he added.

Zerch competes with apps like Shop Bindaas, Madpiggy and Little that help people discover deals in their neighbourhoods.

Hyperlocal solutions are increasingly gaining prominence as startups as well as larger organisations look at tapping local business establishments to drive growth.

"We have seen 25,000 to 30,000 weekly active users... We are focusing an increase of 5-10 per cent revenue for our merchants and targeting a market share of 20-25 per cent of the deals market in the offline space by the end of the fiscal year," he said.